


it was dark when i found you

by whimsicalimages



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: James Bond is also a badass, Kidnapping, M/M, Moneypenny is more of a badass than everyone else put together, Q is a badass, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond stares at him. There are two men tied up against the wall and four more lying on the floor, bleeding and hogtied with duct tape.</p><p>“I ran out of rope after the first two,” Q admits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was dark when i found you

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [夜色蒙蒙](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2484158) by [purplesheep22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplesheep22/pseuds/purplesheep22)
  * Translation into Русский available: [Я нашел тебя в темноте](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3794860) by [Sangrill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangrill/pseuds/Sangrill)



> This movie. _This movie._ I couldn't help myself and this, er, became longer than intended. Translations of the French are at the end - it's all from Edith Piaf songs, which are also linked there. Huge thanks to my roommate/awesome beta [ring_nebula](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ring_nebula) for a) telling me I shouldn't put off a 15-page paper to write this and b) editing it anyway. Title is from Firehorse's ["If you don't want to be alone."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1UIEfWeHKs) Also posted [here](http://whimsicalimages.livejournal.com/10045.html) at my LJ. I hope you enjoy it!

It begins like this:  
  
Q’s eyes open slowly to slits. _Fuck,_ everything hurts. He tries to move his numb hands and finds that they’re tied behind his back – of fucking course they are. Of _fucking_ course.  
  
He’s tied to a chair. Great. Fantastic. He’d thought things like this were only supposed to happen to field agents, but Bond is nowhere in sight. He’ll probably turn up at the last possible moment like the big damn hero he thinks he is. What a cock-up.  
  
He takes inventory. One of his eyes protests when he tries to open it further – safe to assume he has a shiner. The back of his head aches, probably where they knocked him out, and they obviously didn’t bother to tie his hands in a way that would facilitate circulation. If he loses his ability to type to some two-bit _bastards,_ he will personally make sure they are never able to reproduce. And infect all their technology with the Nyan Cat theme song, even if he has to code it with his toes. Which aren’t tied at all. His arms are the only thing securing him to the chair. Idiots.  
  
He can wiggle the fingers on his left hand well enough, though, and his glasses – miraculously – have remained intact. He can also feel the reassuring press of the thin ceramic knife at his hip. One can never be too careful, these days, and metal is too-easily found.  
  
His captors have, however, seen fit to rid him of his gun, which he knows was an entirely reasonable precaution on their part. He even wishes them good luck trying to get it to work without his palm-print. He only half-hopes that the automatic backfire is triggered by someone other than him trying to fire it; it was a bloody expensive piece of equipment. The toy budget of MI6 has already taken several hits in the past year – the new M may be as feisty as the old one, but he isn’t quite as hellbent on extracting tax money from the other ministries for the nominal sake of Queen and country.  
  
Q sighs loudly. No harm in letting his captors know he’s awake, now. The chair is metal – he won’t be able to break it against any of the walls. He just needs to get at the ropes – typical. Ropes. Who even uses ropes? Amateurs, that’s who – and he certainly can’t do that in this boringly empty room. Audiences are so lovely. So stupid.  
  
He sighs again, and he waits.  
  
-  
  
Bond gets the call at four o’clock in the morning.  
  
More precisely, he is asleep – he does need sleep, he isn’t actually an automaton – and thus comes very close to throwing his phone across the room to shut it up, but sees the number and narrowly reins himself in.  
  
“Bond,” he says, operating at almost full capacity after three hours of sleep. If there was a time when he consistently averaged more than that in a night, he doesn’t remember it.  
  
“Get up and get out of the flat. Q has been taken,” M says. Calling himself instead of having Moneypenny do it – he must be worried. _Shit_ , Bond thinks, refusing to examine the catch in his own breath.  
  
He dresses with the phone pinned between his shoulder and his ear. “Where am I going?” he asks, looking for shoes.  
  
“They’ve a compound in the Swiss Alps,” M says. “According to the surveillance they didn’t manage to disable in Q’s flat, he was knocked out before he opened the door – he was grocery-shopping – and dragged away some five hours ago. Bring your cold-weather gear.”  
  
Bond bites back a snarl. _Five hours._ It’ll be at least two more before he can get there. “Helicopter?” he asks.  
  
“Waiting for you. Moneypenny will take you to it,” M says. “And Bond?”  
  
He grunts a response, pulling ski gear out. Something tells him he’ll need it.  
  
“I needn’t inform you that we need him back in working order,” M says, “but I will, since you aren’t in the habit of returning things as you found them. And we do need him, as he’s got the entire damn security system in his head, and no cyanide capsule to back out with.”  
  
“Why not?” Bond says, keeping his voice light. “It’s worked out so well in the past.”  
  
“We offered. He refused. Get it done,” M says, and ends the call.  
  
-  
  
Two men finally come into the room after he’s calculated up to the three-hundredth digit of pi.  
  
“Took you long enough,” he mutters, and gets punched in the stomach for his trouble. He can’t curl in on himself, but then again, it doesn’t hurt that much. He’s had worse.  
  
“Get us into the MI6 servers,” the man on the right begins, “and we’ll let you go.”  
  
Q is tempted to laugh at them. Who do they think they are? M is probably freaking out over nothing back at headquarters, and Bond is probably on his way. Ridiculous.  
  
“And if I say no?” he says, because he knows how this goes.  
  
“We’ll inflict very much damage on you,” the other man says, “very slowly.”  
  
“Out of curiosity,” Q says, “how?”  
  
“With these, pretty boy,” Thug One says, displaying a nice set of spiked brass knuckles.  
  
Q doesn’t bare his teeth, but it’s a close thing. _Pretty boy_ , honestly. He’s been captured by a pair of dim-witted fools. He doesn’t know how 007 does this all the time. He can feel his IQ decreasing, inversely proportional to the length of time he spends in this room.  
  
-  
  
Eve, as promised, is waiting with a car outside. “Miss Moneypenny,” Bond greets her.  
  
“007,” she replies, perfunctory. She’s got things other than politeness on her mind at the moment, he assumes. “In case M hasn’t told you – although I’m sure he has – you have to get Q back. Not only because we need him, but also because if you don’t, I will cut your balls off. And we both know how devastating that would be.”  
  
“I’ll do my best,” he says.  
  
“You’d better,” she says. Her driving skills haven’t improved. In fact, they might have worsened. Another perk of a desk job, he thinks.  
  
But – it’ll get them to the helicopter faster. He isn’t complaining.  
  
-  
  
“I can get you in,” he says, “but you’d have to untie my hands for that.”  
  
“No,” Thug Two says. They aren’t actual Neanderthals, then. Just – a bit less mentally evolved. A lot less mentally evolved. It’s hard to be as mentally evolved as Q, though, he will acknowledge that much. “You tell us what to type, and we’ll type it.”  
  
“All right,” Q agrees easily. He tests the heaviness of the chair. Sturdy, but entirely within reason. His legs aren't tied, after all.  
  
Thug Two leaves the room – presumably to get a laptop, leaving Q alone with Thug One.  
  
Q smiles the most unnerving smile in his arsenal, then kicks him in the groin.  
  
-  
  
Moneypenny lands them about a mile uphill from the compound. Skiing, it’ll take Bond seven minutes to get there, he estimates.  
  
He puts his earpiece in. “I’ll call for backup if I need it,” he says.  
  
Moneypenny narrows her eyes at him. “You don’t exactly have a brilliant track record of asking for help, 007,” she says pointedly.  
  
“It’s Q,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate. He still has _some_ pride.  
  
“Okay,” she says. “Go.”  
  
He goes.  
  
-  
  
“Hold still,” Q grits out, one knee pinning Thug Two down by his neck, other holding his hands still at his chest, so Q can peacefully work at getting the knife from its place at his hip. It’s slow going, but he has time. Thug One hasn’t got up since Q brained him with the chair when he returned to the room with a laptop. Thug Two was still reeling from the after-effects of the direct hit – Q doesn’t miss – to his testicles, and was unable to fight back when Q pinned him.  
  
Q knows he’s heavier than he looks. And smarter, and stronger. Ah, underestimation. What a marvel.  
  
He finally gets the knife out – custom, wicked and serrated – and saws through the rope tying his hands together. From there on, it’s easy to cut them free of the chair. He claps his palms together to return some of the feeling – he’s beginning to suspect they were numb not only from the rope, but from the cold. Or he might’ve just been too busy thinking. He really ought to work on remembering bodily functions.  
  
Thug Two groans and coughs when Q gets off of him. “Shut up,” says Q, and steps hard on his ribs – he screams, but Q knows he deserved it – before tapping him on the temple with the chair, the man immediately falling into unconsciousness. Nobody can say Q isn’t merciful.  
  
That settled, he rubs his hands together again. Almost all the feeling is back. What remains is definitely a product of the cold.  
  
Good, he thinks, he won’t actually have to castrate anyone. That would have been unpleasant.  
  
He takes his captors’ guns and drags them to sit back-to-back before tying them together that way with the rope they’d used on him. He ties his knots better.  
  
He keeps the guns at his side, sorely regretting the loss of his customized Beretta. He supposes these will have to do.  
  
Q takes the laptop, cracks his knuckles, and settles in to hack as he awaits retrieval.  
  
-  
  
The compound is too quiet, Bond thinks. He’d left his skis and the matching clunky ski boots outside, changed into the quieter shoes he'd brought.  
  
He goes up and down every single hallway, safety off on his Walther, before the music starts.  
  
 _“D_ _es yeux qui font baiser les miens, un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche – voila le portrait sans retouche de l'homme auquel j'appartiens. Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose…_ _”_  
  
Bond raises his eyebrows and holsters the gun, heading towards the only room with a light on – the hallways are lit by emergency red lights. It’s in the last hallway he checks. Isn’t it always?  
  
He pushes open the door to find Q levelling a gun at his head with one hand, typing with the other. He looks up and puts down the gun, seeing that it’s Bond.  
  
“Oh good,” Q says. “Here I was beginning to think I would starve to death before you showed up.”  
  
Bond stares at him. There are two men tied up against the wall, and four more lying on the floor, bleeding and hogtied with duct tape.  
  
“I ran out of rope after the first two,” Q admits, following his line of sight.  
  
Bond is still working on reconciling the posh accent, the old-man cardigan – typical – and the laptop with the fact that there are six large men injured or dead on the floor. “Good job,” he finally says.  
  
“Oh, you needn’t look so surprised,” Q says, rolling his eyes. “I’m not incapable, despite what you bloody field agents may think. I’ll bet M is positively shitting himself. Well, here I am. I’m fine. I’ll even submit to psychological testing. I am, after all, not exactly a delicate fucking flower.”  
  
“Clearly,” Bond says, trying to stop staring and failing. He isn't trying very hard.  
  
“Besides, there was a rather beautiful and complete lack of research in it, really. I’m double-jointed and ambidextrous. Of course I could escape from a chair to which only my arms were tied,” Q says.  
  
“Of course you could,” Bond echoes, still staring.  
  
“What? What is it?” Q demands. “If I have something on my face, it’s because they punched me. But I’m _fine._ No real damage.”  
  
“It’s nothing,” Bond says, shaking his head. He can’t resist. “Edith Piaf?”  
  
“It’s a beautiful song,” Q says. “And I like it. And I needed to listen to something good while I was programming their tech to play Rebecca Black on repeat.” Bond gives him a blank look. Q is unimpressed. “Nevermind. It’s annoying, that’s all you need to know.”  
  
Bond sighs, resisting the urge to run a hand over his face. All the rush, all for nothing except a wounded pride, and an opportunity to see the damage Q _could_ do without a laptop. Which, apparently, was quite a bit. Q doesn’t look so vulnerable anymore, not even with the black eye and the cardigan. He looks – like someone who could hold his own. Who _did_ hold his own.  
  
James Bond knows better than anyone what a turn-on sheer competence can be.  
  
“Miss Moneypenny,” he says.  
  
“007,” he hears, not quite clear through the earpiece.  
  
“Compound is secure,” he says. “Q is, in a word, _fine_. Let’s go.”  
  
-  
  
The thing is – Bond hasn’t really been close to anyone since Vesper. His M is dead, so his friends number in the zero range.  
  
At least, they do, until they don’t. Until suddenly, Moneypenny – Eve, now – is loudly complaining to him about paperwork while she hands him a USB drive, both of them using an enormous metal door as a shield from gunfire. Until Tanner is smiling a tiny smile, like he knows something nobody else does, when he discovers Bond in the weight room at two in the morning; someone is always awake in this place. Until even the new M – Bond thinks it’ll be a while before he’s just M, not the “new” M – is getting less short with him, either willingly or necessarily ignoring Bond’s tendency towards low respect for authority.  
  
And Q – well, Q is something different entirely, isn’t he?  
  
-  
  
Q is up at three in the morning, still at HQ. The main building has been rebuilt, although Q-branch is still in the basement. They don’t see the light much anyway, and getting into the Chinese government’s mainframe isn’t _hard,_ but the dark makes him feel cooler. There. He’s admitting it to himself.  
  
Someone turns on the light, and he almost hisses at them. Moneypenny stands in the doorway, eyes red. She’s grown less used to staying up to obscene hours.  
  
“007 needs your help,” she says.  
  
“Doesn’t he always?” Q asks, long-suffering, but closes his laptop and follows her out.  
  
“He’s got himself pretty badly banged-up, and wants to know if you can help him get out by hacking into the server. Apparently, there’s an automatic lock to pick,” she says.  
  
Q blinks. “How ‘badly banged-up’ is he, that he’s actually asking for my help?” he asks.  
  
“You’ll see,” she says.  
  
In M’s office, M and Tanner are watching Bond on the widescreen. He's glaring at the camera as if it’s the one that has been stabbing him repeatedly. He has a nasty gash running from his left shoulder to the bottom of his right pectoral, and what looks like a bullet wound in his thigh. Again. He’s not wearing a shirt, and is cuffed to a cross. Business as usual. The crucifixion isn’t even new.  
  
“Honestly, how does he manage to get himself into these situations?” Q wonders aloud. Nobody answers. It was rhetorical anyway, he tells himself.  
  
He looks at the screen, squinting. Bond is blinking in Morse, the madman. Q – DISABLE – LOCKS. PW – PHARAOH. It’s slow, though. Q can see even on this shitty tape that his pupils are blown – he’s been drugged. Stupid.  
  
“Give me the connector cables,” Q says. When Tanner is slow to move, he snaps, “Do it now!”  
  
He gets the cables, and has four new screens at his disposal. He codes on one, pinpointing the location and their servers, running a quick algorithm to get the password, and he’s in.  
  
Tanner, M and Moneypenny stand in the background, but he’s absorbed. Bond needs out of there soon, or he’ll bleed out, if he hasn’t yet.  
  
He pulls up a live video feed of Bond on another screen – he’s not alone now, a woman in the room with him. She kisses him, but it looks like he’s not responding. Or maybe it’s the tied-up thing. It does it for some people, Q thinks, but evidently not for Bond.  
  
The woman steps back, and slaps Bond across the face. The crack of it is audible on the video feed, and Q barely hides his wince. Sadism was never much his cup of tea.  
  
“I’m in,” he says, “but we need to wait for her to leave the room before I unlock everything. Otherwise Bond will lose his chance.”  
  
“Hurry it up,” M says. “We don’t want him to give up and bite that new pill in his molar. Didn’t you say that thing could take out a city block?”  
  
“Bond isn’t that stupid or that hasty when he isn’t thinking with his cock,” Q says. “He knows I’ll get him out of there. It’s my job.”  
  
-  
  
After punching Bond in the neck hard enough that he’s gasping for air, the woman leaves.  
  
Q may or may not breathe a sigh of relief when he unlocks the door to Bond’s cell and locks the woman into her office. Bond, in all his hazy glory, still looks up at the camera, winks, and mouths “thanks.”  
  
His grin is blood-stained, and when Q manages to remotely undo the mechanism cuffing Bond to the cross – at least he wasn’t actually nailed to it – Bond just rubs his wrists where they’re chafed, sends a quick salute to the camera, and jogs out of the room to – presumably – find the woman and kill her. Hopefully he isn’t too impaired by the drug.  
  
His grin is blood-stained, and Q doesn’t think about how it’s gorgeous, and he definitely doesn’t think about a bare chest criss-crossed with scars or too-old blue eyes or power and loyalty carved into bone and skin and sinew.  
  
His grin is blood-stained, red wine that tastes of copper.  
  
Q doesn’t think about that.  
  
Q steeples his fingers, and thinks about math, and how if he were a villain or terrorist, he would stop using computers and go completely old-fashioned, because he’d be too afraid of himself to go anywhere near technology. He certainly wouldn’t use electronic locks on anything.  
  
Q likes to think he’s a pretty formidable opponent. Q is also almost always right.  
  
-  
  
Q only startles a little when Bond slams a leather case on his desk, probably intending to make him jump. He opens it, and – of course – the pieces of 007’s latest customized Walther are lying, disparate and lonely, inside.  
  
Q sighs, pushes his glasses up his nose, and says, “Yes, 007, I can fix it for you. Although I must say, you’re pretty rapidly working through your quota of times you can ask me for help in a week. I’m surprised you haven’t committed seppuku or something equally drastic yet. Doesn’t it make you feel _emasculated,_ asking little old me for help?”  
  
Bond smirks at him. “I haven’t technically asked, so it doesn’t count,” he says. “And I brought the pieces back, didn’t I? Wouldn’t want you to have to start from scratch.” _Again. As usual_. The unspoken words hang in the air between them.  
  
“Next time, I’ll leave you crucified,” Q says sweetly.  
  
“No, you won’t,” Bond says, too-cheerful. “Thanks, Q.”  
  
Q dumps all the pieces on his desk, examining them mournfully as Bond strides away, no limp in sight. He’s apparently choosing to ignore his still-healing bullet wound in favour of maintaining his ridiculous macho aura. Fucking field agents.  
  
“No,” Q mumbles to himself. “I won’t.”  
  
-  
  
 _“_ _Allez, venez, Milord, vous asseoir à ma table. Il fait si froid, dehors - ici c'est confortable! Laissez-vous faire, Milord, et prenez bien vos aises – vos peines sur mon cœur et vos pieds sur une chaise…_ _”_  
  
Q is still awake – when does the man _sleep_ , Bond wonders – when he returns at 2AM with the latest hard drive filled with information. He knows, because the speakers in the basement are playing Edith Piaf and he can hear it upstairs, and who the hell else would it be?  
  
He makes his way downstairs slowly – his leg is killing him, physical therapy not quite finished yet, and nobody’s watching – and straightens up when he reaches the lowest level.  
  
Q looks up when he puts the drive on his desk. “007,” he says. “Shouldn’t you be giving this to M?”  
  
“He’s not here and I assume you know what to do with it better than he does,” Bond says. “Some people sleep.”  
  
“Only the boring people,” Q says. “Very well. Since you assume correctly, let’s take a look, shall we? Unless you have more pressing matters to attend to.”  
  
His expression dares him to leave. Bond thinks about the woman who had made eyes at him at the bar in Northampton earlier, before he’d had to kill her employer. Domestic terrorists are always easier to handle, but – he probably won’t be seeing her again. He isn’t disappointed by that; how strange.  
  
“No,” Bond says. “Nothing urgent.”  
  
-  
  
Or perhaps, it begins like this:  
  
Q has a very nice record player and countless Edith Piaf records in his flat, as well as a terrarium containing what appears to be a docile red-tailed boa constrictor.  
  
Bond should be more surprised than he is. Q has a bloody pet snake, because of course he does.  
  
He also has a shelf full of books about French culture and history, many of them written in French. He’s back from the dead again, and M’s flat is far away.  
  
At least, that’s what he tells himself. He’s also grown fond of the snake in the past hour that he’s spent waiting. It’s a nice snake.  
  
The light switches on, and he blinks. Q is standing in the doorway, gun pointed at his head. Again.  
  
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Bond says.  
  
“About time,” Q says brusquely, putting the gun back. “We didn’t even have time to sell your flat – it’s only been a week that you’ve been M.I.A.”  
  
“No sympathy for the injured,” Bond chides, shaking his head.  
  
Q notices the bloodstain at the side of his shirt. To his credit, his eyes only widen marginally. “Why aren’t you at medical?” he asks, stepping closer and frowning.  
  
“Your flat was closer,” Bond says. “And I hate medical.”  
  
Q sighs and goes into the kitchen. “You’re lucky I have a first-aid kit,” he says. “And also that you didn’t try to leave after you came in. Then you would’ve got carbon monoxide poisoning, and I would’ve inadvertently killed you and all sorts of terrible consequences would have followed, you know. You really oughtn’t sneak into people’s flats without their permission.”  
  
“Old habits die hard,” Bond says mildly. “And I just need disinfectant. I stitched the worst part earlier today, after finishing the job.”  
  
“You stitched it yourself?” Q asks, incredulous. “Damn it, 007, we need you in good shape, and a rush job stabbing yourself with a needle won’t do.”  
  
Bond growls. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. I’m capable of handling myself,” he says. “I really only need disinfectant, Q.”  
  
“I know you’re capable, idiot,” Q says, finally emerging from the kitchen with a box of anti-bacterial wipes, a towel and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “That doesn’t mean a real doctor couldn’t do a better job of it. And, in case you haven’t noticed, neither of us are real doctors. Sit down.”  
  
“I’ve noticed,” Bond says, but sits and takes his shirt off. He really does need disinfectant – dental-floss stitches and soapy water are only good for so much. Q makes a face. “What, never seen a scratch before?”  
  
“Hardly,” Q replies. Bond makes a grab for the peroxide, but Q holds it out of reach and it fucking _hurts_ to try and stretch that far. “No. I have needle and thread, and we’re doing this properly if you refuse to go to medical. I’ll disinfect everything, you just sit there and shut up and stay still, or so help me God, I really will shoot you. Make friends with Gloria or something.” He gestures towards the terrarium.  
  
“You named your boa constrictor ‘Gloria?’” Bond asks, staying put. He _is_ the guest here, he tells himself, so he should do what his host tells him to.  
  
“Gloria is a perfectly respectable name,” Q says, retrieving the first aid kit itself and wiping a needle with one of the disinfectant wipes. It smells like lemon. Q snips the knot at the end of the stitches off, pulls out the string. “Christ, Bond,” he says. “Do you try to get injured, or does it simply happen this often?”  
  
“Of course I don't _try._ I’m not stupid, Q,” Bond says. “Being a field agent involves a lot of fighting. Not that you would know.”  
  
“And a lot of sadomasochism,” Q says under his breath, spotting the whip-marks on Bond’s back. “I suppose you want to disinfect those, as well?”  
  
“I don’t know, Q, I’m supposed to be sitting still and shutting up,” Bond says easily.  
  
Q glares at him, baleful, but quickly wipes down his side and stitches the skin together in tiny, neat loops. He puts surgeon’s tape over the gash and eyes it critically. “It should be fine. Lean forward,” he instructs.  
  
Bond complies only to feel the sting of anti-bacterial wipes on the shallow cuts left by the whip. He almost hisses, getting the distinct impression that Q is testing him.  
  
“There,” Q says once Bond’s entire back is prickling.  
  
“Thanks,” Bond says, pulling his shirt back on and buttoning it up. He can feel Q’s eyes tracking the movement, looking for signs of lingering pain. Or maybe just looking. “Tell M I’m alive, will you? We both know how he worries.”  
  
“Will do,” Q says. “Though I suggest you do it yourself to minimize the fallout.”  
  
Bond nods, and Q opens the door for him. Before he can think better of it, Bond catches Q by the chin and presses their lips together briefly.  
  
“Q,” he says as Q blinks several times in a row, mouth open ever-so-slightly, for once lost for words. “Good night.”  
  
He turns, and walks – _escapes_ , but James Bond is no coward, so he _walks_ in a dignified manner – to his car, some remnant of happiness evidently still clinging to him, even after all these years.  
  
He smiles. It’s small, but it’s there, and that’s the important thing.  
  
-  
  
“Eve,” Q drawls into the phone, lying in his bed, head buried under his pillow. He fed Gloria her frozen mice earlier, on autopilot after – _that_. “Eve, I know you’re there. Come on, I know it. Pick up. _Pick up_. I’m so fucking – so fucking confused, Christ. I mean, what I mean is, confusion never stops, closing walls and ticking clocks, except this isn’t a fucking Coldplay song, this is my fucking – fucking, my fucking _life_. Eve. Moneypenny. _Eve._ ”  
  
“Much as it’s fun to listen to your drunk-dial confessions,” Eve says. Q hadn’t even heard the receiver click on. Always a bad sign. “You aren’t making sense.”  
  
“Of course I’m not making sense! How could I be making sense? I can’t make sense, this isn’t math, it doesn’t work,” Q moans. “It’s that shitting fucking arsehole, fucking double-oh-fucking-seven. It’s his fault. It’s _always_ his fault.”  
  
“Poor baby,” Eve agrees. “Do you want me to come over with junk food?”  
  
“No, no, I couldn’t, no, it’s the middle of the night. I couldn’t make you do that,” Q says. “I’ll just sit here feeling wretched until morning.”  
  
“Q,” Eve says. “It is morning. It’s six o’clock. How long have you been drinking?”  
  
Q looks out the window. The sun is probably angry at his bleary eyes. “Shite,” he says. “It is six, isn’t it? Bloody buggering _fuck._ ”  
  
“You’re much more prone to swearing when you’re pissed, you know,” Eve says. “Maybe you should take the day off, and I’ll come over later with doughnuts, hm, and you can tell me what that mean old field agent did to you? Doesn’t that sound good?”  
  
“I can’t take the day off, I can’t, everything will fall apart. Everything falls apart even when I’m _there_ , Eve, it’s a serious problem. A serious problem! What will MI6 do when Bond finally gives me that heart attack he’s working towards? Collapse, that’s what, it’ll fucking collapse, and the only thing they’ll find of me will be fucking Coldplay. Fucking confusion. _Fuck_.”  
  
“Sh, you’ll be fine,” Eve says. “You can take the day off, because it’s Sunday, and even villains have to rest. Go to sleep, okay? You’ll feel better when you wake up.”  
  
“Eve,” Q says, “you give the shittiest fucking advice. But thanks.”  
  
He promptly hangs up and loses consciousness before his head even hits the pillow.  
  
-  
  
True to form, Eve shows up exactly twelve hours later, coffee for her and sweets for him in hand. Q opens the door knowing he looks a sight and not particularly caring. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he makes his most pathetic face at her until she hands over a doughnut.  
  
He trudges into the kitchen, where a fresh cup of Earl Grey – his third since waking up at 4PM – is waiting for him. Eve follows, sits next to him.  
  
“So,” she starts.  
  
Q sighs. He seems to be doing that a lot, lately. He takes a big bite out of his doughnut. “So,” he parrots.  
  
Eve makes a face. “Finish chewing, that’s disgusting,” she says.   
  
He rolls his eyes, but obediently swallows. “007 is alive,” he says.  
  
She nods. “He checked in with M at midnight,” she says.  
  
“He was here before then,” Q says. “He was injured and refused to go to medical, so I let him use my disinfectant and first-aid kit and it was nice and peaceful and I didn’t really mind that much because, let’s face it, Bond is good-looking enough, and I’m not _that_ cruel, and everything was _fine_ even though the idiot stitched his own wound so I had to redo it correctly and he had some nasty whip marks on his back but he was walking all right–”  
  
“Q,” Eve interrupts.  
  
“Right, yes,” Q says. “Anyway, before leaving he – he _kissed me._ Who _does_ that? Who does he think he is, honestly? Seriously?”  
  
Eve snorts. “He’s James Bond.”  
  
“Yes,” Q says, “but _who does that?_ You can’t just – you can’t just _kiss_ people willy-nilly. It isn’t done. I’m not one of his little _conquests._ ”  
  
“I don’t think he thinks you are,” Eve says.  
  
“Well,” Q says, wind gone from his sails. “You know, I think that's even worse, isn’t it?”  
  
“You’ll get through it,” Eve says cheerily and sips her coffee.  
  
-  
  
It turns out they don’t have to get through it – Bond is, apparently, someone who kisses people as thanks or something, as he makes no attempt to follow up.  
  
Q, for his part, is glad to pretend nothing ever happened. Bond continues being – _Bond_ , sleeping with infinite women – the fact that he hasn’t got any STIs yet is a true surprise – and Moneypenny continues to listen to his drunken ramblings like the good friend she secretly is. M continues to be snide and Tanner continues to be two steps behind everyone else in MI6 except for the times when he’s two steps ahead. Those are rare.  
  
Q continues not to think about blood between teeth and a torso lace-patterned with scars and he most certainly doesn’t think of blue, blue eyes.  
  
-  
  
“007, take a left, take a left, damn you!” Q yells into the mouthpiece. He’s gratified when Bond visibly twitches on the video feed from the volume of his voice.  
  
He’s less gratified when Bond takes the earpiece off entirely, putting it in his pocket.  
  
“Fuck,” Q says. “Shitting buggering _fuck._ Someone get me Moneypenny.”  
  
“Already here, Q,” she says from the door, loading her own Walther PPK.  
  
“Go make sure 007 doesn’t get himself killed, would you?” Q asks.  
  
“I’m on it. Do I have a ride?” she asks. Her love of fieldwork overpowers what remains of her guilt about 007 on a fairly regular basis.  
  
“Yeah, Tanner’s getting someone. Go,” he says. “Help him, he doesn’t know where he’s going and I refuse to be the one to sit him down and tell him he’s an idiot afterwards. Again. I’ve done it the last God-knows-how-many times.”  
  
Eve nods. “Got it,” she says, “and Q? I told you you’d get through it.”  
  
He scowls at her, but doesn’t reply.  
  
-  
  
Maybe it even begins like this:  
  
“What the fuck, 007?” Q says, walking into his flat to find Bond lounging with a book next to Gloria’s terrarium. He makes a mental note to change the locks on the windows to something more difficult to take apart.  
  
Bond looks up from the book – it looks like one of his travel guides to Paris. “Reading up,” he says. “My next mission is Paris, you know. Plane leaves tomorrow.” He checks his watch. “Today.”  
  
“But why are you _here?”_ Q asks.  
  
“You have a lot of books about France,” Bond says, shrugging minutely.  
  
Q takes a deep, steadying breath and goes to put the kettle on. Tea solves everything. “You could’ve taken one from the bloody library,” Q says, returning to the other room and sitting, knees tucked into his chest, on his enormous sofa. He’s aware that it makes him look about twelve, but he’s too tired to do anything about it.  
  
Bond glances at him, raising his eyebrows.  
  
“Oh, carry on, then,” Q says irritably. “Privacy is a thing of the past, anyway. More _your_ era.”  
  
“Q,” Bond says. “You should sleep.”  
  
“Concerned now, are we?” Q asks, listening for the beep of the electric kettle – the one thing he allows himself to be a philistine about, when it comes to tea.  
  
“Your flat is safer with me in it than without,” Bond says. _And you look like shit_ , he doesn’t add, but Q sees it in Bond’s eyes, which don’t say much for sleep, either. What a mess. Bond, in his flat, having concerned _feelings_ about Q’s sleeping habits _._ Honestly.  
  
Q sighs. He is forever sighing around this man. “Do as you will,” he says, and goes to pour himself tea at the beeping from the kitchen.  
  
“Were your parents French?” Bond asks.  
  
“They were. Not that you should know or care,” Q says, settling back into the sofa cushions with his tea and watching the steam wisp out of his mug. Not his favourite, but it’ll do.  
  
“I’m interested,” Bond says.  
  
“Why?” Q asks, plain. He’s so _tired._ “Why are you _here_ , 007? Why are you asking about my life, reading my French books, sitting in my flat like you – like you have the right? I’m not one of your love ‘em and leave ‘em girls, in case you haven’t noticed. Your life is in my hands often enough. Rest assured, even now, if I let Gloria out without having fed her, you’ll be the first thing she goes after.”  
  
Bond holds his hands up, calming. His eyes are laughing at Q. Arse. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “I’m not allowed to be interested in the lives of my colleagues?”  
  
“You’re only interested in the lives of people you want dead,” Q points out. “And this isn’t interest, it’s stalking. It seems to have escaped your attention that I am neither female nor given to bending over for arseholes who think they own the world.”  
  
“Believe me,” Bond says. “It hasn’t. I’ll just have to try harder.”  
  
Q retreats further into the sofa, pulling his laptop out. “Fine,” he says. “ _Fine._ I give up. Take the book with the green-and-blue cover off the shelf, anyway. That’s the best Paris guide I have.”  
  
Bond stands, knees not-quite creaking, but it’s a close thing in Q’s imagination, thinking about angles and the force of gravity. It’s astonishing how old fieldwork can make a relatively young man. Bond pulls the book out and leafs through the pages. “They’re in French,” he says. “The annotations.”  
  
“You aren’t the only multilingual one,” Q says, not looking up from the laptop until Bond walks over and closes it. “Hey!” he says, indignant.  
  
“Sleep, Q,” Bond says. “I’ll be here, and I know for a fact that you haven’t slept in two and a half days.”  
  
Then, Q realizes – it’s been a year since the Skyfall incident, and the old M, and the horizon on fire that he only saw through a computer screen, and Bond is coping by trying to protect – _him_ , of all people.  
  
They all have their emotional crutches, he supposes, their anniversaries to ignore or get emotional on. Everyone in MI6 has their scars. Some more than most.  
  
He gets the absurd urge to hug Bond, but the man would probably take it as an invitation for sex, which is problematic on too many levels to count. Q doubts he ever lets himself be hugged for hugging’s own sake. A shame, that.  
  
“Okay,” he just says, and if Bond is surprised at his acquiescence, he doesn’t say anything. Good man.  
  
“Good night, Q,” Bond says.  
  
“Good night, 007,” he replies. “Don’t get yourself killed tomorrow.”  
  
Bond only smiles in response, tiny and quiet on his lips, and cracks open the book to the first page.  
  
-  
  
Q sleeps as soundly as he ever has, especially considering the trained killer in his living room reading about faraway cities and enjoying the company of his boa constrictor.  
  
When he wakes up, Bond is gone, along with what was once his mother’s favourite book on Paris.  
  
Gloria isn’t impressed. Q shrugs at her and feeds her a mouse.  
  
-  
  
“Q,” Bond says, running after a man who’s managed to elude him across three countries, two time zones, and five nights of exceedingly little sleep. He thinks he can be forgiven for being snappish.  
  
Q catches himself, breaking his tangent on the assorted flora and fauna of Cambodia in Bond’s ear. “What is it, 007?” he asks.  
  
“Is now really the time?” Bond asks.  
  
“There’s no time like the present, 007,” Q says, cheerful. He’s always cheerful when Bond is out of breath and running after or from people, Bond thinks darkly. “Besides, if you happen to wander into the Cambodian rainforest on this one, listening to this is in your best interest.”  
  
“I won’t have to, if I catch him before,” Bond says, swearing under his breath. Where had he gone? He pushes through fruit vendors and barely avoids stepping on beggar children.  
  
“Alleyway on your left,” Q says. “You’re lucky we’ve good maps here.”  
  
Bond grunts an acknowledgement before taking off down the alley, only to emerge into a crowded bazaar. His target could’ve changed into anyone here. _Fuck._  
  
“Q,” he says through gritted teeth, “I’ve lost him.”  
  
“Onto another city with shitty WiFi, then,” Q says.  
  
“Well,” Bond says, wry. “You needn’t sound so happy about it.”  
  
They’ve achieved normal, he thinks. Or – whatever ‘normal’ is to people like them, anyway.  
  
-  
  
The twelfth time Bond visits Q’s flat, it’s because he knows that Q is visiting relatives and won’t be back until the next morning.  
  
It’s because he knows that, but he needs familiar smells – somehow, somewhere between gunpowder and copper-tang now lie sterile keyboards and tea at any and every time of the day – and he needs sleep, not necessarily in that order, and it’s possible that he’s lost his key and doesn’t want to go halfway across the city only to have to pick his own lock. It’s also possible that he has a mild concussion and shouldn’t really be sleeping. However, Bond is a big believer in the idea that if you ignore something long enough, it will go away.  
  
So, Q finds him in the morning, covers loose around his waist. He purses his lips, draws the blankets up further – it’s a bit chilly of late; he hasn’t got around to turning up the heat since he’s in this place rarely enough – and goes to make tea.  
  
When he comes back, the light blue drapes are billowing out from the newly-open window, and the bed is made up and totally empty.  
  
The colour of the drapes reminds him of something. He laughs a little, takes a sip of his tea, and closes the window. It really is stupidly cold outside, he thinks. Idiot.  
  
Some habits die hard.  
  
-  
  
“You two should just fuck,” Eve says, and Tanner coughs to hide his snicker. “Alternatively, you can invent a power generator that depends on your sexual tension to run. It would be incredibly cost-effective.”  
  
“Sexual tension can’t be measured or harnessed as energy,” Q says, “leaving aside your erroneous assumption that such sexual tension even exists in this situation.”  
  
“Are you sure you can’t measure it?” Eve asks. Q stares at her until she cracks. “Because I think yours definitely has a number attached to it, and that number is _seven._ ”  
  
Tanner loses control and bursts out laughing.  
  
M walks by and smacks Tanner on the back of the head. “You laugh like a braying horse,” he says. “It’s unbecoming.” Tanner looks appropriately chastised.  
  
“Thank you, sir!” Q calls after him.  
  
M turns around and gives him the stink-eye. “You are most certainly _not_ higher up on my list,” he says. “I just need your brain working properly. My God, man, get yourself together! _Really._ ”  
  
When he regains the ability to close his mouth, Q resigns himself to being the only adult left in this place. They’re supposed to be _working._  
  
-  
  
The n th time Bond visits his flat – Q hasn’t really lost track, because it’s Q’s job to keep track, isn’t it, but he doesn’t care about the number anymore – Q decides that he is done. He is done with billowing drapes and careful tiptoeing around whatever slow burn is between them. He is done with losing contact, wires sparking with no connection.  
  
When Bond begins his ritual staring contest with Gloria while she eats her mice, Q runs a hand through his hair and mutters, “Oh, for God’s sake.”  
  
He walks over to stand in front of Bond, watching him. Q wants to trace every line in his skin until he could reproduce them from memory on a graph, on a map – the cartography of ice-blue eyes and limbs hardened by the crush of the world.  
  
Bond looks up at him and Q wonders what he sees. Rumpled clothes and endless bedhead? Tea-stained everything and plastic fingers, long, typing fingers, harder to break than someone would first assume? Most of Q is hard to break, he knows. Q is curious, so he wonders.  
  
He brushes a knuckle along Bond’s jaw, letting his fingers splay into the heat. Bond is as still as Q has ever seen him, chest barely rising and falling, and Q leans in slowly, infinity ticking by in the seconds he gives Bond to turn away.  
  
Lips meet and Q thinks it may be the most chaste thing Bond has ever done, just a pressure and a warmth.  
  
Bond begins to murmur, “Look, I can’t promise –” against his mouth, and Q smiles and breathes in the rest of it.  
  
He pulls back, looks at Bond. “I don’t need you to,” he says.  
  
Bond has a well-trained poker face, but Q reads the relief in every shade of the sky inside his irises.  
  
-  
  
It ends – or maybe, just maybe, it simply begins again, and again, and again – like this:  
  
Q is sitting in bed, typing away at his laptop, blue light throwing his face into sharp contrasts.  
  
Bond sleeps curled around him like an enormous cat, and just as warm. Soon, Q will let his body shut down, press alongside Bond’s, and rest.  
  
For now – there is work to be done.  
  
-  
  
 _“Plus fort que mon amour pour toi – la mer, même en furie, ne s'en approche pas. Plus bleu que le bleu de tes yeux – je ne vois que les rêves que m'apportent tes yeux.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Translations and links:
> 
> “Des yeux qui font baiser les miens, un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche – voila le portrait sans retouche de l'homme auquel j'appartiens. Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose…” - "Eyes that kiss mine, a laugh that is lost on his lips - here is the unchanged portrait of the man to whom I belong. When he takes me in his arms, [and] he whispers to me, I see life in pink..." | **Edith Piaf -[La vie en rose](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feNVUwQA8U)**
> 
> “Allez, venez, Milord, vous asseoir à ma table. Il fait si froid, dehors - ici c'est confortable! Laissez-vous faire, Milord, et prenez bien vos aises – vos peines sur mon cœur et vos pieds sur une chaise…” - "Come, come, my Lord, sit at my table. It's so cold outside - here it's comfortable! Let yourself go, my lord, and be at ease - lay your troubles on my heart and put your feet up on a chair..." | **Edith Piaf -[Milord](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d00o1_zUync)**
> 
> “Plus fort que mon amour pour toi – la mer, même en furie, ne s'en approche pas. Plus bleu que le bleu de tes yeux – je ne vois que les rêves que m'apportent tes yeux.” - "Stronger than my love for you - the sea, even furious, does not approach it. Bluer than the blue of your eyes - I have not seen dreams that could show me your eyes." | **Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour -[Plus bleu que tes yeux](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqsBrF4eD6c)** (there's also a solo version [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRqKaaGRBPI), but I'm actually partial to the duet)
> 
> I hope you guys liked it! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: It was Dark When I Found You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/847087) by [magicranberries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicranberries/pseuds/magicranberries)




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